For US women, the contract potential bonus payouts for the Olympics and WWC are the same $ amounts. The potential victory tour bonus for the Olympics are spread out over fewer players vs. WWC (18 vs. 23) plus the US Olympics itself gives medal bonuses.
I am no fan of French (I think she's awful and deserves to be sacked, along with Snow), but I also would like to hear realistic replacements for them.
Actual names r less important than hiring philosophy. If u believe the way u want the YNT to go is a highly technical passing brand of soccer then the first step IMO is bring in coaches who have had previous success playing that style of soccer. Hiring at the USSF seems much more predicated to bringing in people they like and having them adapt to the style they want them to implement. It's a lot like hiring ur best friend to fix ur car because he fixes his own car even tho u dont drive similar types of cars.
I've been campaigning for Vlatko Andonovski for some time. I wouldn't mind seeing him work his way up the youth ranks to the full senior team.
To be honest, I have no idea if she should continue. I actually have other thoughts about what she might be doing in the future. But, if you're going to say there are qualified coaches out there, you should be willing to name them. There might be a couple I could think of, but they're college coaches who almost certainly would not give up their college jobs, so they're out of the picture. The same probably is true of the very few club coaches who would be potential candidates. So seriously, can you come up with a qualified coach who would be likely to take the job?
On that point Im still confused as to why we needed full time YNT coaches. These youth jobs used to filled by college coaches looking to get their feet wet in the international game. I for one wouldnt mind seeing someone like Andonovski or Cromwell take a crack at it for a two year cycle. Hell, I dont like Radcliffe but if he was interested Im sure he'd bring something to the program. Why should quality coaches have to quit their jobs to get their foot in the door. The YNT used to be a way to groom coaching candidates a la Ellis. What do these YNT coaches do the rest of the time? Hell, I cant figure what Ellis does to rate full time but at least her program operates 10 months a year. At the time I thought the move to full time was more about excluding the big college coaches from the table than any need for full time staffing.
My take on the coaching, at both the U17 and U20 levels, is that I don't know what game plan the coaches gave the players -- possibly, to play on the field as they actually played, meaning bunkering and kicking it out to midfield for the U20s -- or possibly something else, but the players simply wouldn't do it. If the former, I'd criticize the coach; if the latter, possibly the coach some but mainly the players. Apart from coaching, however, our players played poorly. We had defenders who received the ball in space, particularly on the right side of the field, with time to do something intelligent, and they simply booted the ball to the other team at mid-field. That's simply very poor play. If some of the players who stayed in college are better, so be it, but if they aren't better then our whole development program is a mess. I suspect it's the latter, and as I've said before, our development of skilled players is greatly impaired by winning young being far more important than developing young. This is a cultural problem, it is a massive parent problem, it is a coaching problem from rec to club (ECNL and otherwise) to college. The college piece of the problem is a really difficult one, since coaches' abilities to keep their jobs depends on their teams W-L-T records over time. At the club level, the clubs and coaches often talk a good game: "Our club's philosophy is that we play out of the back, through the mid-field, to the attack." But when it comes to deeds, they don't do it: "That's our philosophy, but this group can't do that so they have to boot and run." Then, since the players don't play on the ground out of the back in games, they never learn how to do it under pressure. And why does this happen? Because the coaches, parents, and players want to win now, even if it's at the 8-year old level. I have seen it happen exactly the way I just described, and it's depressing.
Mexico demonstrated that your suspicion is wrong. Though they ended up losing in the end, most would agree Mexico significantly outplayed the US in most if not all other measures. With many Mexican American players in US colleges -- only one in an alleged top 20 college program. How do you explain that? There are many excellent players that have never gotten a chance in YNT camp. It's a matter of the type of player you choose and how you want to play. And I would say especially in the back 6 players (defense and holding or DM). The US selected attacking players or forwards and tried to make them defenders and midfielders. And didn't select players with experience in a possession, passing style for those positions. Except Cousins who wasn't athletic enough, but has been in the YNT system for years. Essentially it rendered Pugh, Sanchez and other attackers useless because they had so few chances in the attacking third. It's mostly coaching, which includes player selection.
I just was thinking about this, before I read your post. You could be right, but you also could be wrong. Mexico wasn't playing to win the Cup. The US was. The US style against Mexico was the same as against all its other opponents, except for New Zealand. The US approach against Mexico may have had more to do with how it believed it was going to have to play France/N Korea/Japan than with Mexico itself. The US overdid it, as you and others have said, if they were going to play Sweden v US Olympics tactics. But what I saw was simply poor play by the players, poor decisions, poor passes, poor movement off the ball, etc. Those are on the players. Of course, one of the problems the US development system has is that at the younger youth level, the best athletes mostly end up as strikers. There's not enough parent/player sophistication, ability to handle deferred gratification, abstract thinking about the nature of soccer, to know that other positions are just as important as the goal scoring positions. Thus in late youth, coaches end up trying to teach attacking players how to play the other positions, because by and large they are the best athletes. At the college level, some coaches are famous for doing this -- Anson Dorrance, for example. So, I don't disagree with you on why some of the players may have been struggling, but I think the problem is much, much deeper and more difficult to respond to than you suggest. Interesting to think about: The actual results weren't so bad. Losing by 1 goal to each of N Korea and Japan aren't seriously bad results. Beating Mexico 2-1 isn't a great result, but isn't seriously bad either. As the Cup turned out, tieing France was a pretty good result. The problem with all that is the way it happened. The team as a whole, and a bunch of the players individually, played poorly. Only very conservative tactics and players' drive kept the games close. It's true, however, that the team was missing the bunch of players who stayed with their college teams. A fair question, however, is whether they would have made a difference. Or, alternatively, was it fortunate they weren't there so problems with US soccer development could be so clearly exposed.
I remain less worried about the talent than the coaching. That pretty much runs throughout US Soccer.
The US played Japan in PNG a couple months back so if they had a good book on any team it was them. As the US lost 5-0 they cant use the excuse that they didnt know what to expect. I think French tried to play the only way she thought they could. I also think the players played hard for her. My biggest problem with this is u cant look at the way Japan is developing players and the way the US is doing it and not shake ur head. If they can produce these kinds of player from their population base, what could the US produce if we had the same leadership?
One of the problems with the coaching is they r all disciples. Heinrichs/Ellis believed that the way to build a coaching staff is thru like minded individuals. Im not sure hiring coaches with different styles and opinions isnt the better way to go. When Swanson was brought in to coach the 20s it wasnt because he coached like Sundhage. He brought his own ideas to the table and built the 2012 team the same way he built teams at Virginia. I think it was a big mistake to exclude the best college coaching minds by going full time and I think by hiring a bunch of similar coaches for the YNT they have further culled the coaching herd.
The problem with thinking about the US having "the same leadership" is that this is the US and not Japan (or Germany, or ...). I don't know if there's anything the USSF can do to "lead" a bunch of clubs/college coaches who don't want to follow. We have to remember, a significant number of players chose to stay with their colleges rather than play for their national team. And, this isn't necessarily the fault of the current "leadership." The same thing has happened in the past under different leadership. Remember when Tony coached the team? Stanford did the same thing. This may be a problem the US always will have -- the inability of the USSF to "lead" because those below refuse to be led. In particular in relation to the youth NTs, there apparently are a lot of players who think they just aren't that important.
But I thought the leadership's requirement to redshirt WAS the reason the players chose to stay with their colleges. Does anyone know when the last time a youth team required the players to redshirt? I really do not know, and am curious.
I think it's more about youth clubs than colleges. The base has to be laid at a younger age. And yes the size of the country makes it tougher to control things than in a smaller country. It seems like they need radical change to the system and generally u dont get radical change by keeping the same brain trust.
I thought at the time it was an attempt at compromise by the USSF. In the past kids either committed to the 20s and missed an NCAA tournament or missed the 20s. To me this seemed like a way for colleges not to lose those players for year but it didnt seem to work out like that.
From this team, I think Sanchez, Pugh and Watt will join with slightly older players like Bryan and Dunn to form a pretty potent front 6 for the next decade. Casey Murphy reminds me of Hope at that age. Athletic freak who needs more experience. Elliston doesn't seem to get beat much on the wing and can pass out of the back. Otto is strong defensively, but not great in distribution. Fox is the definition of the player on this team who needs to learn to play as a team. But she's athletic and young, so there's potential to grow.
Elliston was the surprise player of the tournament for me. I think she was the last Penn State player to make the team. IMO, she played the best in this tournament, of the 5 Penn State players. I'm really happy for her.